The World's First Automatic Stroking Machine

The first thing that Brian Sloan did after getting his hands on a prototype for Autoblow 2, the world’s first automatic stroking machine, was to plug it into a power outlet and test it on himself. “The thing ran for three hours nonstop,” he told me.

Sloan, of course, did not last that long.

Autoblow 2 consists of two parts: a detachable sleeve and the actual machine, fitted with an industrial motor, that strokes your private part. Most adult toys use toy motors that last for a limited time period; however, Autoblow 2’s industrial motor ensures a long life. In fact, its crowdfunding campaign claims that it lasts almost five hundred glorious hours.

Brian Sloan

Even that number, Sloan says, is a conservative estimate. Technically, the machine can last more than a thousand hours. (Here, he quotes the disclaimer from ads for Viagra as a caution against the dangers of maintaining long-lasting erections). It also comes with a nine-foot cable so that you can lug it around one or several rooms.

Impressive, right?

But, why use Autoblow 2, when you can do it with your hands?

“Anyone can do it with their hands,” says the thirty-three-year-old. “This machine is a step up mentally and physically.”

Law School, Latex Suits, And Adult Toys

After I published my stories about the adult toy industry last year, the PR pitches came in thick and fast. Very few were interesting; most were not.

Sloan’s pitch stood out for two reasons. First, it was a toy targeted at males, a neglected minority in the adult toy sweepstakes. Second, the concept was irreverent and weird to my semi-juvenile self.

The crowdfunding campaign video is quirky and funny. The website contains tongue-in-cheek instructions for use, which include directions on making a penis hard (“There are various ways to do this” instructs the website but does not provide details).

On a recent Skype call, Sloan told me about his journey as an adult toy entrepreneur. Male adult toys are not a common career choice for law school graduates, such as Sloan. “The one thing I learned in law school was how not to be a lawyer,” he explains to me.

But, he learned how to learn about new things and concepts quickly. This stint stood him in good stead when he started his first business selling antiques bought at bankruptcy auctions on
eBay.

Post graduation, he strayed into its nether reaches of the online marketplace and discovered latex fetishware. “There are a tonne of customers for it (latex fetishware) but there aren’t enough affordable brands,” he says. Sloan capitalized on this niche by buying latex suits directly from Chinese manufacturers and selling them at low prices to customers here in the States. However, the limited demand for his products bothered him. So, he innovated in his marketing tactics.

One cold Chicago evening in 2008, he donned a latex suit and filmed himself hanging out at popular spots in Downtown Chicago. Throngs of weary tourists and businessmen in professional suits passed by but refused to acknowledge him. But, their lack of attention did not bother him. “I didn’t do it to get a rise out of those people,” he says.

Quite a few members of the gay community did give him a rise that evening. So, it was that he found himself (along with a “sweet (heterosexual) couple, who were also vendors” from Iowa) as the only straight people at the very gay Mr. International leather pageant the same year. With the expansion of his business, Sloan branched out into eCommerce and focused on branding, and relocated to China.

A New Market For Adult Toys

Sloan became interested in male adult toys because it is an underrepresented niche in the mainstream market. According to him, the space lacks well-designed toys and a good business sense. As an example of the former, he says existing brands, such as Fleshlight, do not offer the convenience of detachable sleeves. This means that users are left with a, for lack of a better word, mess after the deed is done.

Most manufacturers in this space also work on a high volume and low margin model. This means that they produce a large number of male adult toys with reduced margins. This is not an uncommon model for most consumer products and helps keep prices low.

However, the current distribution model inflates prices with additional costs, such as transportation and maintenance of physical storefronts. Sloan says he keeps prices low by distributing products exclusively through the Internet.

The Hall of Fame Of Customer Emails

The pedantically-named Autoblow 2 is no exception. Pent up (pun unintended) demand helped the product blow past its crowdfunding goal of $45,000. In addition to the coasts, a majority of the product’s funders are from the conservative Midwest. But, Sloan is not judging. “There’s plenty of people who one would think are not into anything unusual but who are actually into everything unusual,” he says.

Sloan maintains a list of emails he calls “The Hall of Fame” from such customers.

For example, there is email from a 70-year-old man who wrote to Autoblow’s customer service complaining about his wife’s refusal to masturbate. Then, there are emails from horny men who confuse Sloan’s service for a sex service, often calling up the customer service representative for sex chats.

In the private parts department, bigger is, apocryphally, considered better. Autoblow 2’s sales, however, dispel that perception. According to Sloan, their biggest seller is size B, which has girth size that is between four inches and 5.5 inches. In regular terms, this size would be considered average. “We need for men to get a picture of reality and not buy the size they wish to wear,”laughs Sloan. There is also the practical side to this. “It jives with reality, inventory predictions, and everything else,” he says.

But, to get back to the existential question that started it all:

What do you do with your hands, if a machine does the job for you? “Simple, you use them to change channels on your remote,” says Sloan.

I am a freelance journalist interested in the intersection between business, technology and society. I worked for a number of years in the IT industry in India before shifting careers to journalism. I graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University ...